Is Droooooooiiiiddddddd Marketing Campaign Hindering The Xoom

Wearing our Android Beanies, as we always do, at South By Southwest, we get engaged in lots of conversations about everything Android. Sometimes to the point where we’re telling the same stories or talking about the same things repeatedly, but that’s great we LOVE talking Android.

The Motorola Xoom was one of those topics. Folks from Verizon Wireless and Motorola talked to us about the Xoom and I shared the opinion that I’m about to share right here.

Is the Sci-Fi marketing campaign of the Motorola Xoom and other Drooooooiddd products now turning into a marketing disaster? The campaign, or idea, when Motorola and Verizon rolled out the original Droid in November of 2009 was a big hit with the tech community and a great way to sell phones. It was reported that the whole marketing budget was 100 million dollars and with the Motorola Droid being the top selling Android phone to date, it seems to have paid off.

The Motorola Droid X, and their upteen million movie theater commercials proved to be a win for Verizon and Motorola as well. So why wouldn’t it work for the Xoom?

Find out after the break

The Xoom, which when put toe to toe with the iPad2, is a better piece of hardware. Honeycomb is a better operating system for tablets than iOS, period, hands down. Where does the iPad2, or any apple product for that matter, beat the competition? Marketing. I know this is going to sting some of our tech savvy readers, but marketing in this case is where it counts.

Motorola made a great decision to go Wi-Fi only and do it quickly. On March 27th Sam’s Club, Costco, Radio Shack, Best Buy, Amazon, Staples and Walmart will all have these wonderful Honeycomb filled tablets on their shelves, and for $599 nonetheless.

Is it worth $599? In our opinion yes are they going to sell millions of Xooms at that price and those locations? Probably not right away.

The difference between the Xoom and any other Motorola Droid phone is the distribution channels they’ve set up. In that regard they are doing it right however at the end of the newsbrief about the Motorola Xoom WiFi we made a statement that now they have to market it to those who shop at Sam’s Club, Costco and Walmart.

Price wouldn’t be the issue if the marketing was right. There’s no reason that a man or a woman in their 40’s couldn’t embrace the technology for e-book reading, net surfing, budgets, social interaction etc. But those people are left out in the message.

Apple has made such an impact on college campuses over the years that those people between 20-30 who either just graduated or are still in college are prone to go the way of the i-product, even if the other hardware is better.

Apple always has bright sunshiny ads with men and women of every color and nationality, teenagers, kids etc. You can use the i-devices on the soccer field, in the kitchen, or covered in a blanket reading a book or watching a video. The Motorola Xoom ads with their dark backgrounds and gruffy voice are targeting a whole different customer.

At this point there could be a 6 core processor and 4D graphics on the XOOM, it could have a MSRP of $499 but until they target the masses, the masses won’t come. It’s a shame too because even Apple users who spend some time with the Xoom quickly say “Wow I didn’t know it could do that”

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